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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26357254">Keep Busy</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/peachykoya/pseuds/peachykoya'>peachykoya</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Old Guard (Movie 2020)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Found Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Nile Freeman Needs a Hug, Nile Freeman-centric, nileweek2020</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 05:34:12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,049</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26357254</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/peachykoya/pseuds/peachykoya</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Nile has a moment alone in South Korea. </p><p> --<br/>Written for #NileWeek2020</p><p>Prompt: alone time/sadness</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>73</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Keep Busy</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After London, they keep busy. Kharkiv, Hiroshima, Davao City, Curitiba, and somewhere called Tainan. Nile gets a crash course in espionage, bomb defusing, skydiving, venom extraction, and of course, all the ways one can die when you have the opportunity to do it more than once. </p><p>Joe and Nicky confront Andy together. They all need a break. They need time to rest, to mend, to go over their blessings and give thanks for the things that can’t be cut away by any scientist or megalomaniac with inflated egos and bank accounts. </p><p>She relents and the husbands hop on a flight to Malta before the day’s even over. Before they leave, they each kiss Nile on the cheek, hold her hands, and give some advice. </p><p>“Keep yourself distracted.” </p><p>They tell her to travel, focus on training, pick up a hobby, do anything, but just keep herself busy. </p><p>“Keep yourself distracted.” </p><p>Nile doesn’t understand what they meant, at first. She and Andy hole up in the Romeo safe house, near the coast, in Daegu, South Korea. Nile’s never been to this country before and soaks up everything she can. The food, the music, the art. She’s on her way to a place called 노가리앤비어문덕점, because that’s the first bar she finds that isn’t also a karaoke lounge. Google Translate tells her the name means “Nogari &amp; Beer Mundeok Branch”, which doesn’t sound right, but it doesn’t really matter. After running around the world, jumping from safe house to safe house, the only familiarity being her new family and the bone-deep exhaustion after each mission, Nile just wanted something she knew. And she knew beer. </p><p>Finding the bar was a little tricky. She could read hangul well enough after two weeks of studying, but that didn’t mean she knew the meaning of what she’d read. Andy, who did speak Korean, wouldn’t help any more than necessary. After all, there was no better way to learn a language than getting absolutely fucking lost and desperate. </p><p>“Panic makes your brain into a sponge. You just soak it all in,” Andy offered her sage wisdom from atop the kitchen counter and around a mouth full of tteokbokki. </p><p>Nile rolled her eyes, “I’m not Bart Simpson.” </p><p>“Who?” </p><p>“Never mind. I’ll be back before 9.” </p><p>The bar is colorfully decorated with posters of various Korean celebrities, most of whom are posing with bottles of soju. There are multiple TVs playing the same soccer game. </p><p>Nile’s shown to a table in the corner. </p><p>Thankfully, the menu has most of the items translated, and she orders “whole squid jjamppong” and something called “hwangtaebugak”. When in Rome, right? The food is good, spicy, and it warms her more than the beer can. </p><p>She’s just pulled out her phone to take a picture, her real phone, not the burner Andy had tossed at her as soon as they reached the safe house. She slides through the pictures she took, looking for the one that captured the light and steam coming off her noodles just right, and then she scrolls back one photo further. To the last one she’d taken before, well, before everything. Before London, before Andy and Joe and Nicky and Booker. Before the pesh-kabz. Before she died. </p><p>Dizzy and Jay. It’s a photo of the three of them posing for the camera, making silly faces and kissing each other’s cheeks. </p><p>She should stop looking but Nile’s never been able to resist pressing down on a bruise. Tugging on a loose tooth. </p><p>Her food’s gone cold and her beer’s gone warm by the time she’s finished scrolling through it all. Through the hundreds pictures and thousands of text messages from over four years of friendship. Four years. </p><p>And all of it, all of it gone faster than it had taken for the skin on her neck to stitch itself back together. </p><p>Nile hears laughter in the bar and voices, voices speaking English. She looks up and sees three women in uniform. Her uniform. Of course. She should’ve known. Camp Mujuk is just a stone's throw away. They’re sitting at a table, laughing about an inside joke they share, teasing each other, clinking their bottles together and reveling in being young, being friends, being halfway across the world from where they grew up. Little towns they thought they’d never leave.</p><p>It all becomes too much, too familiar, too close to the life she lost. Nile stumbles through paying, walking out the door, and back onto the streets of Daegu. </p><p>They left her. Four years of friendship and they threw her away just like that. She presses a hand to the unblemished skin on her neck. </p><p>They left her. </p><p>Nile fumbles for her phone, pulling directions up, and then staring at the screen. What was the last thing they said to each other? </p><p>What would she say to them now if she could? </p><p>What would she say to her best friends, her teammates, the people who said they loved her and turned on her like a stranger?</p><p>Four years of friendship. Four years of weathering homesickness, burning sand, and guilt, so much guilt. For the people they couldn’t save, for the things they had to do all in the name of Uncle Sam. They were each other’s rocks, each other’s lighthouses back to shore when they got lost in the waves of their own crashing and churning thoughts. </p><p>But Jay and Dizzy… they cut the rope. Turned off the light. Turned their backs and washed their hands.</p><p> But they loved her… </p><p>They loved her, didn’t they? </p><p>Didn’t they? </p><p>Andy finds her sitting outside the safe house looking so small and hurt, just a kid who’s lost so much. She sits her down on one of the softer chairs, brings her a glass of water, and waits. If Nile wants to talk, she’ll talk, but Andy waits and squeezes her hand. </p><p>Andy turns on a light. She sits, an unmoving stone. </p><p>“You’re not alone.” </p><p>Hours later, they pack up, trash their burner phones, put away memories that have no place in the here and now. Nile gets a whole trunk of her own to keep at the Romeo safe house. A place to leave things. The start of her own museum, like Andy’s in Goussainville.</p><p>They jump on a plane and they keep busy.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>"I'm not Bart Simpson" is in reference to The Simpsons season 1 episode 11, The Grapes of Wrath, where Bart goes to France and picks up perfect French by osmosis. </p><p>-- </p><p>Thank you for reading! Every comment and kudo is a diamond that I drop in my pocket and save for a rainy day, so please leave me some below. </p><p>Thank you to my dear Tasha (clueless) for looking it over, I adore you!</p><p>Find me on tumblr <a href="https://peachykoya.tumblr.com/">here</a></p></blockquote></div></div>
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